The present invention is directed to a system and method for image processing and signature detection. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a system and method whereby constituents of an image electronically captured with complex spectral content are discriminated by automatic spectral signature extraction. A set of defining spectral elements of captured image portions are determined, and the complex spectral contents, or the multi- or hyper-spectral pixels, of the image are represented as combinations thereof. The present invention is directed, moreover, to a system and method wherein image pixels are represented responsive to variations from known signatures in a database and automatically adapted to suit certain lighting conditions and other artifact inducing aspects of the imaging process, such that constituent features of the captured image may be accurately discriminated. Among other things, this enables a reduction of pixel information to discover a list of novel signatures or to refine any particular signature for better processing of any particular data capture instance.
This invention utilizes certain aspects of methods and systems previously disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/748,182, (now U.S. Pat. No. 7,079,986) entitled “Greedy Adaptive Signature Discrimination System and Method” and that filing is hereby incorporated by reference and hereinafter referred to as [1], as well as certain aspects of methods and systems previously disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/387,034, entitled “System and Method For Acoustic Signature Extraction, Detection, Discrimination, and Localization” that is hereby incorporated by reference and hereinafter referred to as [2].